Final Breath
by this is not a pipe
Summary: REWRITE. As she takes her final breath, the Wicked Witch of the West realizes that maybe the bucket of water washed away more than just her life...Oneshot


**Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked, it owns me.  
**

**A/N: This one-shot is a rewrite of a pathetic fic that went under the same name.  
**

Breathing heavily, she leaned against the door. With all the frenzy and madness in the palace, she found a moment alone, a moment of quiet. The strange young girl - the one with the foreign blue dress and childish piggy tails, the one causing all this madness - was locked in one of the many vast rooms of Kiamo Ko, while Chistery was occupied by that obnoxious dog...was it Dodo? Toto? Did it really matter? She knew her time had come. Something in the back of her head told her to give up. They were just shoes.

But they were _her_ shoes.

They belonged to the Witch! That Dorothy had no right to take them! Glinda had no right to give them to her! Voices were chirping in the back of her mind - _give up, give up, give up_. But she wouldn't, she couldn't, she refused to let all her hard work go to waste. She was barely aware of her shrill cackling and heartless insanity – she did not care what the world thought of her. If the world saw her as a Wicked old Witch, then let them. She did not mind the gossip of vindictiveness overflowing the streets, because for all she knew, she _was _Wicked. She _was_ cruel, _was_ heartless, _did_ deserve to rot in her own little hell.

She was no longer that girl that made the library her kingdom and knowledge her salvation.

She was no longer Elphaba.

Elphaba...It was a name that belonged in another world, belonged to another place, another lifetime entirely. She hadn't heard it since her time in the Emerald City. Back then, she was part of a group even she did not understand. Back then, she was carefree and naïve and - albeit secluded and alone - almost happy. Back then, happy was foolish. Back then, happy meant you knew nothing and walked on through life without noticing the tattered landscape.

But the past was for pathetic fools. Everyone who had a proper head on their shoulders remained right where they belonged – in the present.

With a flash, everything came back, like a stream after the rain – overflowing and loud. She couldn't help it – it was as though a simple name from her past brought back thousands of memories, triggering thoughts she had banished.

First, she was a helpless baby, the hated green daughter of stiff old Frex and the beautiful Melena. Then she became a girl who was blissfully unaware. She was a _stupid_ girl, a girl who was off to see the Wizard, the disgustingly _Wonderful_ Wizard of Oz. Before she knew what was happening, before she could catch up with her past, she was a desperate woman chasing after forgiveness she could never have.

And now this. Now this hopelessness that relied on acceptance, over a pair of shoes that to her meant everything she had ever asked for in life.

Is this what she had come to? No longer living? She was already dead. Breathing, yes, but deep inside, the beatings of her heart were mere banging on a door in hopes of freedom – the ticking away of a clock signaling the end of time.

That hardly counted as living.

She couldn't save the ones who could save her in return. Sarima, Nor, Doctor Dillamond – they were all gone. She couldn't save him, he who mattered most, he who helped her feel. They all disappeared. They were all far out of her grasp. They were all dead and gone.

Could she honestly tell herself they mattered to her anymore?

She failed to dispose of the one who could have granted her access to bliss. She failed to rid of Morrible, the key to her freedom from that ridiculous group. She couldn't save the Animals or animals, those who had been stripped of their rights and lives and _existence_. She couldn't stop the wizard from twisting Oz into a whirlpool of fakeness.

No, she realized. _Elphaba _cared - Elphaba and that poor old Auntie Guest. But the Witch laughed as she watched morals fly out the window. The Witch couldn't care _less_.

And now she was leaning against the door, fighting to gain breath, and holding a silly girl captive, a silly girl who knew so little of forgiveness she might have been born in a barn.

All because of her sister's _damn shoes_!

But somewhere in the heart she did not have, the soul she did not posses, she knew that the shoes were not the reason. The shoes were not just shoes – she cared not for the jewels that sparkled with color or the peaceful aura they seemed to posses. The desperate girl in hercared only for the words that echoed in her head when she saw them, the life she could have had. They were the essence of acceptance, the very meaning of _'I love you,' _They were the very core of the words that Frex had never said to his Fabala. Fabala, who was now no longer his daughter, but something no one who knew _that_ girl would recognize.

From those shoes sprang the smile she never showed, the sound of her laugh – not a sarcastic one, but a _real_ glorious laugh, one that rang with bells and love and genuine hope. Her mother's lullabies and her own childish gurgling leaped out of those shoes, because they came from her father and belonged to her sister – and the Witch knew that she needed them both to smile at her, even in the trenches of the mind that existed before the Witch took control.

But the _Witch_ wanted the shoes because they were power. Because they meant that she was right, that Nessa was just a good for nothing girl in a chair, that Glinda and Galinda and all those other girls were only good for being beautiful. They meant that the only thing that mattered was being able to step on the rest of the world and squeeze the idiocy out of it.

And the broken Fae was kicking and screaming from within the heartless Witch, hoping to get out.

She was fished back from the endless pool she had drowned in by the bright jolts of reality. The sounds of thumping footsteps were in the hall, behind the door, and soon in the room with her. He was breathing heavily, much like she was. No need for questions arose – Dorothy could already be heard making her way up the flight of stairs.

_Oh Liir_, the girl in her had longed to say so many times before, in much less frantic moments than this_. You know not how I long to reassure you that all will be well. I need you to know that in my own special way I care. _

The chubby boy would forever be a mystery to her, even though her mind screamed with recognition. For how could this normal little boy be of her blood, how could this living child stand before her when his father could not? So she told herself that he was simply _there_, that he was not a punishment for all the things she could not do – A punishment, a living proof that a woman with no ability to feel had fallen in love.

She told herself that she wasn't really standing in what would soon to be a scene of chaos. She told herself that this was another illusion, that the Witch would soon wake up and realize that she was in her private hell, where she had always been, stuck in the body of a college student who just couldn't make a difference. She told herself it wasn't really happening; Liir wasn't _really_ kissing Dorothy, the broom wasn't _really_ catching fire, the water wasn't _really_ advancing on her with such clarity.

She cackled as the world spun around her, as people felt and loved and mourned. Her shrill voice mocked others, the shrill voice mocked herself. Because no one deserved second chances, no once could escape the tragedy that all beings met. She laughed because she finally reached her time to be free of the injustice of living

The acid splashing her was welcoming – it was a refreshing awakening after a long nightmare that had seemed so startlingly real. She greeted it with open arms, waiting anxiously for what was to come. Both wanting it and not, she shrieked with delight and pain, letting it slither down her angular body, leaving a numbingly tingling sensation where the liquid had touched.

No matter how much the foolish girl begged, she couldn't forgive her. Not for the death of someone who had let her take care of her, the one who always treated her with an awed kindness, the one who was her sister and her friend. She wouldn't forgive her for taking the shoes, the items that gave her a little peace of what she once was. Not for splashing her with what was acid to the Witch.

Not for unlocking the door and letting Elphaba rush out. Not for letting a girl with so much compassion fill up a void that the Witch never wanted to fill. How could the Witch, or Elphaba, or both, forgive? Because no matter how much they tried, no matter what effort they put to connect their two pasts and form forgiveness, they could never give out something of their own empty share. How could the Witch bestow when she had nothing herself? How could Elphaba forgive when she knew not the meaning of the word? It panicked her to think of it. It mad her nervous and afraid. She had never been asked to forgive, she was always the one forced to beg for it. She simply and quite frankly didn't know _how_.

And so, without forgiveness or happiness, or the hint of a smile, she felt herself melting into the ground – figuratively and quite literally. It was as though her body was falling apart, as though it were finally breaking after so many years of. She let herself burn, let that naïve little Liir watch horrified, let Chistery continue with his empty chanting and rhyming and nonsense, let Dorothy drown in the depth of her guilt.

The Witch didn't care. Elphaba wept inside, for a girl who never was and never would be, yet the Witch watched, cackling from the sidelines. She was shrieking with rage at how she fell prey to the want for innocence of a little girl, yet glorifying in the fact that she no longer had to worry about the oddity of the living world – about the strangeness of the girl with the checkered blue dress and curls of brown that seemed so much like the Elphaba who wanted to make a difference in the world.

Death could bring her the peace she never had, the quiet she longed for, the one that rang with justice and rights. Death would bring her acceptance into life, would shed the green away – the green that now stood for envy because others had known the acceptance that was just beyond her reach.

Death would be worlds away from the Horrors of the Wizard and a murder she could not commit, from the imprudence of a little girl in pig tails and the bafflement of a boy who was just _not _hers.

Death would reunite her with the blue diamonds that believed they could lie on a green field forever, without preamble or closure.

The pain would almost be welcoming if not for the screams that racked her body. It would have been relief if she was just able to put mind over matter – as she failed to do now but had achieved so many times before. It would have been triumph if she could only control the tears that proved her weakness. They were tears that she could no longer feel as they rolled down her cheeks – a mere bucket of water had made sure she was completely numb.

And behind her eyes, away from the dripping acid that fell like a waterfall across her face, she saw. She saw the people in her life who, with their bare hands, shaped it and molded it into the life that it was now. They were those who were mocked by the Witch and cherished by the girl Elphaba. They were family, friends, lovers, and people who she cared nothing for yet remained a constant in her life anyways.

They were people like the goodly Glinda and the silly Galinda, who was one person one day and another the next, yet who sometimes she found that she could be both. They were Horrible Madame Morrible, rigid and tall, who was already dead when murdered, and yet even in death she managed to pull a storm out of her feathery hat. They were the Wizard himself, strong and powerful, yet still a failed and broken man. He was a man made up of broken lies that glued themselves together and came back to haunt him. They were people like Sarima, who was kind and welcoming, and yet could not find it in her to forgive. She didn't want to forgive, not when she could deny the truth and live in a bubble of a lie. The truth was only ever a figment of reality, a reality that everyone always attempts to shun.

The Witch stood mute as, before her eyes, standing tall and firm, came Fiyero – her darling, _darling _Yero. He was her hero, who seemed to love her when no one else could, with his curious dark skin and those beautiful, enthralling blue. She would give anything to feel his warmth on her coldness, his arms holding her tight. She missed the time when longing was not forever eating away at her heart – a longing for his kiss, for his embrace, for the captivating blue diamonds that were forever dancing on a green field.

But beyond the faces of those who starred in the story of Oz stood a green girl. She was sardonic yet hopeful, always believing that she could make a difference. Then reality came twisting in around her like some great storm and flipping her world upside down. The girl had wanted to take a stand, to do something good for the first time in her life. But no good dead goes unpunished, and soon the girl learned that it would be better to shed her innocent skin and hide behind the Witch – because the Witch saw reality, and Elphaba only ever saw dreams.

And maybe the Witch was pessimistic, and maybe the Witch was destruction and hate, but the Witch was also safe. The Witch had locked her heart in a box and made sure that it would never come out.

And now it did, and now Elphaba was sitting on the cold stone floor and gasping for the breath that would never come. The play was over, the game was done, and the safety of the Witch had died away. Now all that was left were feelings and desperation, and the need to have the final word. And now Fabala, Elphie, and Fae were all clutching at the soul they never believed in, but the soul was slowly making its way towards a field of blue diamonds in the sky.

When the Wicked Witch of the West melted, all her hatred and wickedness came rushing out, striping her of the cold shell she had built and leaving her naked. Standing cold and alone was a young girl named Elphaba, with a glint in her eyes and the hint of a smile on her face. She was on a quest to change the world and save the Animals, and maybe even fall in love with a Prince. She left the world with laughter and a name. She waltzed off hand in hand with her soul, and together they leaped over insanity and wickedness.

On the floor of Kiamo Ko lay a peculiar green mask of envy, dripping with the acid that was reality. There it is rumored to always stay, a memory of a Witch who would always long for the girl that she could never be.

"_And there the Wicked Old Witch stayed for a good long time."_

"_And did she ever come out?"_

"_Not yet…"_

**A/N: Flame me, love me. Any reviews are loved.  
**


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